Animators, animation writers and executives, for the most part, live a life of obscurity. While often working and living in the same Hollywood bubble as their live-action counterparts, animation folk don’t show up in US Magazine, get invited to sit down with Letterman, or end up disgraced on TMZ.com. There’s a few exceptions to this rule, however – Matt Stone and Trey Parker (South Park, Book of Mormon), Seth Green (Robot Chicken, Family Guy) and the other Seth – Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy, American Dad, The Cleveland Show). There’s other ‘big names’ in the animation game (Groening, Lasseter, Judge, Burton, Miyazaki), but the public isn’t terribly interested in what they look like when they jog or eat dinner. This isn’t a wonderful gauge of success or happiness, but I’m pointing it out because today we have a prime example of how bright Seth MacFarlane’s star is burning. Today he’s on the cover of the insider mag The Hollywood Reporter, and his jet-owning, club-going lifestyle has indeed landed him on TMZ more than once.
In this behind-the-scenes video of his cover shoot, you’ll see MacFarlane shoulder-to-shoulder with Groening and Judge, perhaps ‘accepting the torch.’ He is standing on the shoulders of these two animation greats, but he’s also redefining the reach of an animation icon, establishing that animation is but a part of his interests. In the cover article (Seth MacFarlane: The Restless Mind of a Complicated Cartoonist), we learn that MacFarlane “thinks that Family Guy should have already ended,” but let’s not forget that in 2003, it did, only to be resuscitated for 8 more seasons. There’s also interesting details on the reboot of The Flintstones, and his surprising goal of “infusing more scientific accuracy into entertainment programming.”
